This is a superb recent series of papers from CIGI about the evolving geopolitics of the arctic, this article focuses on the ambitions of East Asian nations like Japan, Korea, and China in the Arctic.
Sovereignty in the Arctic has been a latent issue, and international practice has been that the countries that have lands in the Arctic have essentially divided the region among them. Climate change, and the alterations that it is making to Arctic geography, are turning the region from a frozen wasteland to a shipping channel and a storehouse of natural resources seemingly begging for exploitation.
That change is also changing the attitudes of nations outside the club of countries with Arctic lands, and the countries of East Asia are making a more assertive case that they have interests in the arctica as well.
The entire series is superb, but Kai Sun’s “China and the Arctic: China’s Interests and Participation in the Region” will be of particular interest to Peking Review readers.
